Room Design Tools for Placing Antiques, Part 2
This article is a follow-up to my previous posting on a quest for design software that could easily be used to place footprints of unique antique furniture in two-dimensional room schematics. While the previous software I reported on fell short of ideal, I have recently found a more useful tool.
It has become common for mega home furnishings stores to provide an on-line tool that allows customers to place footprints of their products in a diagram specified to the size and shape of their own rooms. But many of these tools only allow a user to insert furniture of the exact dimensions of the products the company sells, so are not adaptable for people wanting to try out unique antique furniture in a virtual room setting. One tool used by these stores, however, is much more flexible, because it provides templates of generic furnishing (sofas, chairs, tables, lamps and the like) whose exact dimensions a user can specify. It is room planner software developed by Icovia which different companies customize with their own logos and homepages, but the inner functioning across all of the stores’ applications are the same.
I tried this software as provided by Ballard Designs (download the free app at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ballard-room-planner/id504303985?mt=8) by first creating an accurate dimensional outline of a recently renovated room in our home that we are ready to furnish. Although I first tried to use the tool as an app on a mobile device (an iPad) I found that it lacked some key features that function on a standard desktop or laptop computer, which I suspect has to do with Flash not being functional on iPads.
Once I got going with this app on my pc, however, it was quick and fun to use. I created a diagram of our 34’ x 14’ library, and moved walls to create the fireplace, bow window and entry doors to their actual dimensions.
From here, I could begin to play with inserting furniture into the layout using the app's Furniture Menu.
I chose and placed diagrams of our built-in bookcases and then inserted a variety of furniture sized to the correct dimensions of pieces we’re considering. I even found and inserted symbols for the plants and urns that will line the five windows in the south-facing bow of the room.
This tool allowed me to quickly consider a second lay-out option for a sitting area near the fireplace.
So this experiment was a satisfying success, since anyone wanting to try out a one-of-a-kind antique in a layout of a room in their home should be able to do so with this tool. For instance, a Cherry Gallery customer could note the dimensions of a hickory settee on our website, choose a generic outline of a settee from this app’s menu, and then make the icon the correct size and scale for placing in a diagram of a real room. Give it a try and let us know what you think!
A Glimpse into the Future
Another approach to trying out furniture in your own virtual room setting is through “augmented reality” software. This allows users to take a photo of an actual room, and then insert a picture of the furniture they might wish to purchase for the room, all done to scale. This adds a whole new level of reality to the simple line-drawing approach of the tool described above. But how realistic could a dropped-in catalog photo of a piece of furniture look within a photograph of a room where no such furniture currently exists?
To find out, I downloaded a free augmented reality app called "Decolabs" (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/decolabs/id568129876).
Since I plan to get a new office chair soon, I snapped a photo of my desk without a chair using my iPad’s camera. The app then provided a tool for inserting an exact measurement between two points within my room. I measured from the left leg of my desk to the right edge of the carpet, placed the measurement pins at those two points in my photo, and then inserted the correct measurement of 38”. This became the guide for the app to appropriately scale a piece of furniture to my room.
I then browsed the app’s catalog of furniture, and inserted an Aeron desk chair into the photo of my desk area. I was able to rotate the chair and move it towards and away from the desk to see how well it fit, both physically and aesthetically.
Although the inserted chair image looks a bit overscale and somewhat artificial without the tonality of lighting that a photo of the chair in the actual room would provide, it is still a pretty convenient way to get a general idea of how a new chair would look at my own desk.
So far, augmented reality apps such as "Decolabs" seem only to be linked to certain commercial product lines, so it might be some time before antiques dealers can offer a generically useful augmented reality tool to our clients who would like to try out a photo of an antique in a photo of a room in their home. Until then, we can look forward to having an additional way to meld high-tech room design tools with the low-tech presence of antiques.
